You are very welcome Griffen, we are always glad to welcome new players!
To answer your questions:
1. The program is based on taking initiative and action instead of idling in a chat room, there is no way to see other players/games with the program other then this browser based AJAX chat (Accounts which are connected to the forums). This is in theory of course, and it is quite normal to see 10 people on and no games, because people are busy and generally have lives, but if you suspect there is a network issue, get into the player lobby and test with someone there.
How it works, is that the moment you; or another person loads up C&C95 and hosts a network game, everyone will be informed by the program that you have hosted, and it will reveal which country you are doing so. Then they will be able to simply hop onto your game by launching C&C95 from the right click menu (skips intro + main menu) and voila, off it goes.
2. Depends on your time zone, most people here are EU so try to be on in your prime time. The program is still fairly new and the community is growing, so the best thing to do is find a gaming partner/mate on the chat or from elsewhere and organise a time to be on with them.
CnCNet is currently going through some changes, yes. We have already recovered from most of the damage done from losing our original setup to a botnet and porting issues to linux for the server but those are mostly behind us now.